


Walking into the Light

by orphan_account



Series: Led Away from the Darkness [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Anal Sex, Blind Character, Blind Sherlock, Boarding School, Developing Relationship, Developing Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Exploration, Falling In Love, Hybrid John, M/M, Oral Sex, Physical Disability, Protective John, Sherlock Being Sherlock, Slow Burn, Teen John, Teen Sherlock, Texting throughout
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-28
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-09-20 11:31:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9489095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Young Sherlock Holmes hadn't expected to lose his vision. Being without it was frustrating, difficult--nearly impossible, even. Right when he needs it most, a friend comes into his life--John Watson, a boy with a physical deformity of his own. They become fast friends, instantly realising how much they need one another, but Sherlock soon learns that there are far worse things to lose than his sight. The story starts when they're kids and continues on into their teens, and will eventually make it to their ages in the show and onward. This is part 2--their teen years.





	1. Chapter 1

John wasn't so sure how he felt about any of this.

A tie. New shoes. A white dress shirt underneath a grey vest, under a jacket with some embroidered school logo on the breast pocket.

John wasn't _used_ to any of this.

Maybe he never would be, but he wouldn't have been here if there weren't one or two reasons he was at all. Some more pressing than others.

While he wasn't always accustomed to the 'joy', (he would say so facetiously) of public schooling, he did enjoy that he always had the opportunity to wear what he liked. The freedom that came from knowing exactly where he stood, who everyone was, where everything was.

He didn't always have much, granted, in terms of dress, just a simple pair of trousers and a jumper or t-shirt of some kind, but it was still better than this.

It certainly made one or two things a little more... uncomfortable.

Shifting the books from one arm and into the bag on his shoulder, John pushed his way through the large doubles doors and into the main lobby. He'd already been given his room assignment, his class schedule, everything he needed, and had settled in, but the first Monday after the weekend left him feeling just a bit unsure, as he looked around. Everyone who walked past, other boys and girls all dressed (mostly) the same as him, had their goal in mind, walked briskly down the halls to their destination.

Advanced chemistry was his first class of the morning, and when he finally found the room after wandering around the huge school for nearly fifteen minutes, the class was already well under way.

He paused outside the doorway, just briefly, to look inside, and then slowly opened the door.

Immediately every head in the room turned to look in his direction.

It was a feeling that, over the years, he had grown to feel a bit... unresponsive to.

"Erm," he said. "Is this Professort Oschu's class?"

The professor in question, a man with a bristly moustache and a large stomach, only gave him a cursory glance, looking at the schedule in John's hand before waving his hand towards the class.

"Take a seat please. I'll come around to you momentarily. We are on page three-hundred fifteen. Please open your textbook and follow along."

Well. Straight to business, then.

John closed the door behind him, walking through the lab and (attempting) to ignore the curious stares from his new classmates and the sudden onslaught of new smells.

His senses had only heightened over the years.

He took a seat in the back, in one of the empty tables, next to which was a pretty girl with blonde hair that John would have smiled at any other time, if he hadn’t been busy getting out his books.

 

Sherlock paid no heed to the new student. He was sitting in the back of the room, his finger deep in the belly of a frog that he had cut open only moments before. Just from reviewing a braille diagram, Sherlock knew precisely where each and every organ was located, as well as the size and shape of them.

This frog fit the bill, save for one thing.

"Pregnant!" he said, a bit louder than he'd intended. It wasn't that exciting, but Sherlock had never felt around inside of a pregnant animal before (although, granted, this one wasn’t pregnant so much as she was filled with eggs). He could feel them, tiny and gelatinous between his fingers, and he scooped them out, setting them down on the plastic mat the frog was resting on.

In front of the class, Oschu only shook his head. "Quiet in the back, please."

Sherlock's immediate impulse was to say something back, something snarky, but he bit his tongue. All things considered, Oschu was his favourite professor. The man was an idiot--weren't they all?--but at least he didn't force Sherlock to follow along during the lecture, listening to material that he already knew.

School was even easier than Sherlock had thought it would be. The academics, at least. He got the book, read the book, memorised the book, and then, as far as he was concerned, the class should havebeen over and done with.

The other parts of school weren't quite as simple. Sherlock had a penchant for saying things he shouldn't, both to his fellow students and to the professors, and it got him into trouble more often than not. Detention here, demerits there. Sometimes a fist to his face. The most recent of these presented itself as a dark blue-and-black ring around his eye, a gift given to him by a buffoon named Jacob Waters after Sherlock had taken it upon himself to share that Waters' girlfriend, Amelia Blakeny, was cheating on him.

As Sherlock had sat in the headmaster's office, an ice pack held to his face, Waters in the chair beside him, he'd shrugged.

'I was just sparing him heartache. Isn't that _kind_?'

That had actually never been on his mind.

"Can you keep those away from me?" asked the girl sitting beside him, as she pushed her chair away, looking down at the frog eggs in disgust. In her defense, they _were_ rather close to her, and she _did_ have to endure each and every one of his experiments, but Sherlock had told her many a time to squeeze herself into another table setting if it bothered her so much.

"No," he answered, his deep voice rumbling in his throat. His voice had dropped even lower than Mycroft's, something that Sherlock took pleasure in even though he didn't know why. Now if only he could grow another two inches to surpass his brother in height.

"They're all slimy!"

"Yes, of course they are. That’s the membrane. How else would they survive amongst the other organs?"

At the front of the class, Oschu, again, shook his head. "I said _quiet_ , please."

Quiet. Everything had to be quiet, except when Sherlock didn't want it to be.

 

John couldn't see the boy that the professor was talking to. He was somewhere on the other side of the room, a small sea of heads blocking everything but a mop of dark hair.

He raised an eyebrow curiously despite most of the class signing with impatience or rolling their eyes. Every school had one oddball, he supposed.

Not that John really had much room to talk.

 

The class went as John had expected.

Not too good.

Maybe it was because he was coming in to the middle of a unit, more likely because the class was far more advanced than what John was, admittedly, a bit used to. John was good at science. Decent, anyway, but chemistry was different from physiology and anatomy, physical science and biology. Chemistry was on a completely different branch of its own, and one of the subjects that gave John the most trouble.

The pretty blond girl next to him seemed to take notice that after forty-minutes in the class, John had all but stopped scribbling notes and raised his hand for the third time, asking the professor if he could repeat what he said.

To which he did, with only a little bit of edge in his voice.

"Here," the girl murmured in a quiet voice, whose name, according to the top of one of her assignments, was Mary. "These are from last week."

She slid a small stack (Christ, a bloody _stack_?)  "You can copy them, if you want."

She gave him a smile before turning back to the lecture, and John more than willingly took them.

From somewhere on the other side of the room, John heard a loud grunting sound and his attention was, once again, drawn to the other side of the room. He could hear a quiet sort of mumbling, incoherent grunts and phrases, things that seemed would normally disturb any _other_ lecture, but the professor kept on talking as if he (almost) didn't hear anything at all.

Beside him, Mary could see him looking over her head, and she leaned sideways.

"You get used to it."

"What's he doing?" he responded in a quiet voice.

"God only knows," whispered Mary. "Most of us stopped asking questions."

John lifted an eyebrow again, but he grinned a little bit before a clearing throat from the front of the class told them to be quiet.

Ironically so.

The class ended not with a bell, as John had grown accustomed to, but with a simple wave of a hand and a, "That will be all, class. I'll expect your lab reports and the assigned reading to be done by Monday."

John stood up from his chair, standing slim and just a little short of five-foot seven. He raised his hand to his blond hair, still kept just slightly on the longer side, and passed a hand through it in a constant, repetitive state that he had grown so accustomed to doing for the past six or years now. His fingers glided over two carefully concealed lumps.

No longer was there nothing on the side of his head, though. Instead, in place of nothing, were two, normal, prosthetic human ears, applied every single morning with every bit of care and time as the last.

Because that was what he had to do, now.

"Thanks for the notes," he told the girl next to her with a polite smile. "I'm John, by the way."

"Mary," the girl responded confidently, nodding in greeting. She smiled at him as she collected her books. Before walking off, she winked and him and said, "Good luck!"

John had a feeling he was going to need it.

As the room began to clear out, John waited in the back. He watched everyone go, save for one or two on the other side of the room, before walking up to the professor's desk for a word.

 

Chemistry was Sherlock's favourite course, which meant very little considering he never paid attention to the lecture. The experiments, too, were dull, only because he had done the majority of them in his childhood, long before even entertaining the idea of going to an actual school.

That was back when his parents had attempted to keep him 'safe'. First it had been because he was strange (extraordinarily intelligent), then because he was blind. The first time he had come home with a busted lip, they had called the bloody school.

Called the school!

Even though he did suffer physical assaults from time to time, Sherlock did _not_ wish to return to homeschooling. Sometimes he thought he might enjoy it because he would be home and able to study things on his own time, but on the flip side of the coin, he would be alone without any stimulation whatsoever.

Besides, the school had a proper lab. Sherlock's mother and father weren't keen on getting him one, confident that one day they would return home to a dead son and a house in flames.

Still, Sherlock wouldn't have been opposed to a change in his routine. It was the same thing every single morning: wake up, stumble into the bathroom, shower, shave, futz about with his tangled curls, get dressed, spray a single squirt of his bacon-maple cologne onto his neck, get dressed, and go to class.

Day in and day out, the same routine.

Sherlock was long since finished with his dissection when the class came to a close. He put his hand against the side of the mat and swept it, frog and supplies and all, into the rubbish bin beside his desk. He kept it there at all times, so he would have a place to toss out the crumpled papers containing theorems and unsolvable problems that he scrawled during some of the lectures, when he couldn't do any sort of experiment at his desk. Oschu was the most generous of professors in allowing Sherlock to do things besides pay attention, but that didn't mean he would let just _anything_ slide.

Sherlock stood up and lifted his messenger bag over his shoulder. His uniform was disheveled because, when he got back to the dorms, he would just toss it into the corner of his room.

It didn't bother him that his clothes weren't 'up to snuff' with the school's dress code. It wasn't as if _he_ could see them.

Sherlock got his thin, red-tipped cane out from his bag and snapped it open. Even though he was confident that the majority of the students had left the room, sometimes they left their belongings behind--normally right in his path.

Whether it was intentional or not, Sherlock didn't know.

Once he was near the front of the class, his cane swatted hard right against the shins of somebody who was standing by Oschu's desk (he was never very careful about moving the instrument, and it had gotten him in trouble many a time--he still did it, swiping it through the air, not blinking an eye if it came into contact with some idiot who was standing in his way. Sometimes he did it even harder than he needed to, just to express his frustration and annoyance. He could always play it off as an accident later on, although people were becoming less and less inclined to believe that).

Sherlock didn't recognise the individual's scent, neither his cologne nor his clothes. He recognised the scents of the other people in his classes, leading Sherlock to believe that this was the new student who had joined them today. He hadn't paid attention to it actually happen, but he had known that it was _going_ to happen. For some reason that was beyond his level of understanding  students and staff alike felt the need to talk about it beforehand. The students were excited. The professors, not so much.

" _Excuse_ me," Sherlock grumbled insincerely, pushing his way past the other teenager. Some students would have opted to be polite, make a good first impression, help the boy to feel welcomed. Sherlock had no such desire.

His next class was Advanced Statistics, on the other end of the school. Sherlock was always given a few extra minutes to get from class to class (even though he didn't need them), so he did what he always did. After clicking his way down to the end of the corridor, Sherlock opened the emergency exit door (he'd disabled the alarm ages ago) and leaned against it, reaching into the breast pocket of his blazer for his cigarettes and lighter. He lit one and placed it between his lips, then turned his head so the smoke would go outside, rather than back into the school.

If anyone knew he did it, they had yet to confront him.

 

Most surprisingly, it was not the fact that a blind student had knocked into him that had caught John's attention. It wasn't the way he looked, or even how hard he had whacked him with his stick, because after a quick glance in his direction, John continued on what he was saying to Oschu, who was in the middle of handing him the course syllabus and a list of past due assignments that he told him he would need to have completed before their midterms, which was just a few weeks away.

What caught John's attention instead was something else entirely, and it didn't seem to even register until the student was out the door and a wafting of air from the heavy door closing blew in John's direction.

His senses were, for lack of a better word, _assaulted_. Without even realizing he was doing it, he was breathing in deeply, eyes leaving the man he was talking with and trailing towards the closer door, his ears attempting in vain to stand up straight and alert.

Slightly woodsy. Something that reminded him of trees and earth, a backyard after the rain, with just a hint of a crisp spice and a sweetness that made his mouth water. Not too strong. Not overwhelming, just...

Familiar. Familiar in a way that made his stomach clench and his heart skip a beat in a way he couldn't name.

"Mr. Watson?"

"Yes?"

He turned to look at his professor, eyes a bit dazed, who was looking at him expectantly, hand outstretched and holding a binder worth of what John was going to assume very _fun_ material .

"Did you hear what I said?"

"Yes of course. Thank you."

He took the binder from him and turned immediately to head for the door.

And he hadn’t hear a word he’d said at all.

With his own backpack slung over his shoulder and the binder in one arm, he pushed his way through the doors and began looking around, head turning left and right almost wildly as he tried to catch a whiff of... _that_.

There were only a couple other students in the hallway, and most of them were walking into the nearest classroom anyway, right as a soft bell signaled the passing period was over.

His feet began leading him (or perhaps more accurately his nose was) down the south corridor. He made a slight right to keep going and the smell was getting stronger, it was! It was...but really, what were the odds, because...it was too slim, and too _strange_ , but he kept walking anyway, a little bit faster still, until he came to...

A dead end.

Or, more accurately put, an emergency end.

He stared at the door for a long moment, no matter the fact that he had to be in another class at this very moment, (one he hadn't even bothered to check what or where it was). All that mattered was...

Well. No. Maybe it didn't, really.

Inside his trousers, there was a slight...movement in the back, as was on the top of his head, but John willed both to stop.

No... No, it was too unlikely.

He turned to walk away before something else caught his attention; movement from beyond the heavy door.

Before he could stop himself, he pushed it open, and the smell assaulted him once more.

There, sitting on the step, was a boy with a fag hanging out of his mouth, an air of smoke around him, and a cane...a seeing cane, by his side.

A mop of dark curls. Dark glasses over his eyes.

Words failed him. He didn't know how long he stared at him, but it wasn't until he saw the boy turn his direction did he find his voice. And all he could think of to say, in a soft voice, was:

"Erm...where's the Maths building...?"

 

There was very little in life that Sherlock enjoyed more than smoking a cigarette.

It was a habit, naturally. One that he wouldn't be breaking--or even trying to break--any time soon. With the cold wind ghosting across his face, wafting the smell of his own fag back up into his nose, into his curls, into his hair, Sherlock found it soothing.

Mycroft had, unintentionally, got him addicted. The elder brother had come home for Christmas and Sherlock had (naturally) snooped around inside of his suitcase. Initially he had intended to smoke inside and then blame it on Mycroft, revealing his habit to the family, but after only one of the foul-smelling, cancerous sticks, Sherlock had decided he wanted more.

Mycroft, Sherlock assumed, had taken up the habit to try and break his _other_ bad habit, overeating. One could argue that the elder brother was addicted to it, consuming massive amounts of food in shorts amount of time. His waist and backside both showed it off. Apparently he had lost nearly a stone since taking up smoking, but that was to say nothing about how his health would deteriorate with the addition of tar and nicotine.

Sherlock had no concern about that happening to _him_.

Sherlock glanced up when the door was opened. He was never joined outside. Maybe some of the teachers or students knew that he smoked at school (although he doubted it; even with the strong and sudden smell, people struggled to put two and two together), but Sherlock wasn't bothered by it. Nobody gave him any trouble for it, probably because they knew he was the smartest student at the school, for one, and because he had a reputation for being short-tempered, rude, and holding grudges indefinitely.

'Where's the Maths building?'

Sherlock scoffed immediately. Of course he knew where the Maths building was, but why should he make any attempt to help the boy? He was clearly the new student, as nobody else would have to actually ask where they were headed, and it only served to irritate Sherlock further.

He knew every inch of the bloody school (yes, even the girls' bathroom) because he looked--that is, he touched. He felt everything.

He got down on his hands and knees and inspected the floor, the height and width of each step, the number of them, how many lockers lined the corridors, how high the ceiling was from the floor (that was the most difficult to measure). He surveyed _everything_ , so even though he didn't know the specifics--what people kept in their lockers, their combinations (although he had broken into a few belonging to those students that annoyed him the most, by pressing his ear to the door and listening as he turned the combination locks), what books were on the shelves in the library, what plaques and trophies they had in the case--he knew the basics.

The blueprints.

Sherlock gestured to his dark glasses and scowled up at the other boy. "Do I look like the right person to ask? Get it? _'Look'_?" He laughed loudly, obnoxiously, sarcastically, before his expression turned completely serious once more, in the blink of an eye. "There, now that I have made that joke _for_ you, you do not need to."

He shrugged. "I am certain that, if you wander around long enough, you will eventually run into it." Sherlock got his package of cigarettes out of his coat again, huffing when he remembered that the one he was retrieving was his last. He lit it and put it between his lips, pinching out the other with his free hand.

"Now, unless you're going to give me more cigarettes, do me a favour and _go away_."

 

John blinked at the other boy. He was sitting there, completely oblivious to everything that John was feeling and thinking and wanting to say, and all John could even do in return was just... stare.

It wasn't a feeling that John had ever had before, and he wasn't certain what it was. Anxiety and happiness? Bewilderment and confusion? He didn't even quite know if he was dreaming, now that he was standing here in his presence, or if there was even the slightest possibility that it _wasn't_ the person he'd known so long ago, but with that smell on him...

He'd only ever smelled it once, and it conjured images in his head that John wouldn't have ever remembered otherwise. A bed. A window. A desk, and a little machine in the corner of the room. A fort made of blankets...

They said that smell was a powerful memory sense, and for John it had always been true. Now, more than ever.

Because he had never smelt anything else like it before then.

But even so, even knowing that this boy--almost a man, really--was someone he had known so long ago, for such a short time, John couldn't find his words. He couldn't find the words to say, 'yes, hello, you're Sherlock, the boy from the park, and I'm John and once upon a time I found you in the park and you were my best friend for three weeks before my heart broke.'

Those were the things he felt. Those were the things he couldn't _say_.

"I don't smoke," he found himself saying, like his mouth had a mind of its own, squinting a little at the cold air that blew around them. "I don't think I'd even know where to get a cigarette around here, to be honest. I don't even know where the loo is. I got lost trying to find my locker, earlier. Apparently there was a--a second basement I didn't know existed."

He looked away, briefly, because he couldn't quite decide if he could keep looking at him or not, before pulling his jacket a little tighter around him.

"Are you allowed out here?"

 

To say that Sherlock was perturbed by the boy's presence was an understatement.

He didn't like being spoken to. He had nothing to say to anybody, save for rude things in response to whatever the other person said, and he just wanted to be left alone. If no one could say anything interesting to him (which they couldn't), he didn't want to take it upon himself to bother with them.

Why could nobody understand that?

Rather than answering the boy's question right away, Sherlock focused on his cigarette. The tar made his mouth feel dry and sticky, his tongue thick, but he loved it. He just _loved_ it. There was nothing about cigarettes that he didn't love. Even the smell and the risks associated with them he found to be enjoyable.

When asked if he was allowed outside, Sherlock only shrugged.

"Doesn't matter, does it?" he asked, pulling the fag from between his lips and exhaling a steady stream of smoke. "Whether I am allowed to be out here or not, I _am_."

Sherlock did find it strange that the other continue to stand beside him. Sherlock had told him, quite plainly, to go and find the Maths building on his own, so why was he still here? What did he need, what did he want?

Sherlock didn't care to stick around to find out. He was a curious person, yes, but not regarding things of _that_ nature.

He licked his thumb and index finger and pinched out the end of his cigarette. Dropping them on the ground and stamping them out was futile; he could never know where they landed and it meant he would tap his foot around like a moron trying to find it and never even knowing if he was successful or not.

After standing up, Sherlock wiped his hands on his trousers and then started to tap his cane in front of himself.

"Move," he instructed, once again pushing past the boy. He was on his way to the Maths building, but he had no intentions of telling him that. As he had said, the boy could find it on his own simply by wandering around. Eventually he would end up at it.

The building, being on the opposite end of the school, meant that it would take nearly ten minutes to get to it. The campus was enormous, co-ed, and filled with students aging from Year 7 to Year 13.

The buildings were old, but renovated, with tall ceilings and smooth marble floors that amplified the sound of his tapping cane. Now was no different. There were no other students in the hallway, nobody talking or laughing or walking to distract attention from it. The sound had used to be maddening to Sherlock, but he had, since, become used to it.

Not by choice, mind. Just by necessity and exposure.

 

John did move when he was told to. He didn't say anything about the boy's rudeness, or the fact that he wasn't... _anything_ like what he remembered him to be. Not yet, anyway. He didn't remember much, not in a terrible amount of detail, but he did remember... some things. Nothing like this, though.

John watched him brush past, and the smell--and oh, it was so much more than the cologne, but that smell, of _him_ \--was even stronger, and his heart began to beat hard. His mouth was dry and he found a pulling in his chest that was reminiscent of things he had felt before, in relation to this same person.

But for some reason, John couldn't... say anything.

And he didn't know why.

He let the door fall shut behind them as he, too, stepped back inside of the building. The taller boy was already well on his way down the hall, walking with a confidence and know-all that would have fooled John in his being blind at all.

He began walking after him, trailing a little ways behind, all the while staring at him from behind. He didn't even know where he was going. He was just... following.

"Have you gone to this school long?" he found himself asking, speeding up his walking until he was walking up beside him. "I just--well, I just transferred here from public school. My first time in London in a while...This place is huge. Oh, I guess I said that already, didn't I?"

He shifted his binder to his other arm--it was so damn big that it was actually annoying to carry--before clearing his throat.

"Were you in Professor Oschu's class earlier? You were in the back, weren't you? I recognize--well. It sounds weird. I recognize the hair. Your hair..."

Christ. He was rambling.

"What were you doing?"

 

"What concern is it of yours?"

Sherlock spun around, snarling at the boy that was _following_ him. It was one thing to be asked questions, but it was another to be followed and spoken to, as if he actually had any interest in what the bloke had to tell him.

He didn't.

Sherlock answered none of his questions. The last thing he wanted was to have some new boy following him around, desperate to have somebody to cling to at their new school. It was a typical stereotype, something one would see straight out of some stupid teen drama film.

New boy at school. New boy befriends blind boy without any friends. Boys become inseparable, until girl comes and drives them apart. Girl makes choice. Boys reconcile.

The end.

No, Sherlock didn't want any of that for himself. It wouldn't happen and he wanted to spare himself the trouble of it in the first place.

It was only when the boy asked him about his experiment that Sherlock faltered, just slightly. Of all things for him to ask, he had to ask about his _experiment_ , one of the few things that Sherlock couldn't keep quiet about, not when someone actually asked him about them.

"I was dissecting a frog," he answered simply. “ I am collecting various organs from them, to see how they relate to toads'. As of now, it seems they are quite similar."

Identical, actually.

Sherlock turned left and then right at the next corner. He was walking fast, as he usually did, even though he had no interest in actually attending his class. Statistics was fine, but the teacher was an absolute imbecile.

Weren't they all.

Five minutes later, he arrived at his classroom. "Maths," he muttered, waving his hand down the corridor. "Yours is probably down that way. Good day."

He didn't actually care if the boy had a good day or not. All he cared was that he was free from him. As soon as he stepped foot into the room, his teacher, Mrs. Jenkins, sighed. Rather than telling him to stay after school for detention, as any other late student would have to do, she merely said, "Good to see you've decided to join us today, Mr. Holmes. Take your seat."

Sherlock knew she was being sarcastic, but he still did what she said, slumping down into his chair in the very back row. He shut his eyes, hidden beneath his sunglasses. He was already intimately familiar with the course material, but he would take advantage of the time to sort through his mind palace.

 

It was only after Sherlock had gone into the classroom and shut the door that John stopped following him. He watched him go, watching the door shut behind him and seeing him through the glass as he took his seat.

Well. That was... that, then.

Sherlock's smell was gone, all too fast, like the room itself was a vacuum that had sucked him in without a trace.

Although he didn't take notice to it, he could feel the tail inside his trousers wilt. Just so.

He wasn't sure what to make of it. Surely it was his own fault for not saying anything, and surely if he told him--well, reminded him--of who he was, then he would have had a different reaction. A _better_ one.

Even so, he didn't follow him in the class. He needed to find his next. He pulled out his schedule and glanced down.

Trigonometry. Room 318B

Awful.

John took one last look at the classroom that Sherlock had entered, before continuing on his way, following the numbers down the hall.


	2. Chapter 2

The rest of the day, John wasn't able to focus. It seemed he spent half of the day looking around for Sherlock in the halls, hoping to catch some glimpse of him, and the other half thinking about him.

Was it really who he thought he was? Was there some chance of a mistake? Was it really even that big of a deal if he was? And if not, why was John so riled up by it?

Sherlock. Sherlock... Holmes, was it? He hadn't thought of that name, or that person, in so long. He'd spent days, weeks, months thinking about Sherlock after that incident at his house. Waiting to hear from him. Waiting to be invited back to his house. Waiting for something that... didn't come.

Well. For more than one reason, anyway.

He pushed thoughts of him out of his mind, at least for now. There was a lot he had to concentrate on.

Figuring out his new life was just one of them. He still didn't even know where the loo was; how the hell was he supposed to reconcile a connection from eight years earlier with someone who probably wouldn't remember him anyway?

By the end of the day, John had so many assignments, lab reports, and readings to do, he was pretty sure he wouldn't have any free time for _weeks_. He knew, before coming here, that it was going to be a lot harder, but with reality hitting him, he was starting to wonder if maybe it was going to be too much.

He didn't see Sherlock again at the end of the day. The only familiar face, (besides the ones he'd just seen from the halls) was Mary. She was making her way up to the girls' side of the school, to the dormitories. She smiled politely at him, and he did the same, but their interaction ended there.

Instead, he made his way to the refectory, to get a bite to eat.

And maybe start sorting through all this _mess_.

 

Throughout the rest of the day, Sherlock did little more than drum his fingers against his desks.

It annoyed the other students sitting near him, of course, but no so much that Sherlock bothered to stop. Not that he would have either way. He was certain that he annoyed others regularly, but he didn't care about it a bit. Sometimes he felt as if he even enjoyed doing so.

After Advanced Statistics was Etymology. Sherlock had learned all of the word roots, suffixes, and prefixes during the first class. Now, whenever he went, he would read a book during the lecture. Their professor would often ask him questions out of the blue, as if hoping to trap him into looking foolish, but he didn't. Sherlock always had the answers.

What kind of genius would he be if he didn't?

After his final course, Anatomy and Physiology II, Sherlock went to the music hall and practised in one of the soundproof rooms. He didn't need to practise, really, but he just wanted to clear his head, forget about all the boring things he had been forced to endure, all of the pointless lectures and ridiculous conversations.

Tomorrow would be another day, filled with the exact same rubbish.

After locking his chestnut violin in his music locker, Sherlock went to get himself some dinner. He hadn't eaten the entire weekend and his body was actually aware of it, given his growling stomach. He avoided the dining hall as best he could, knowing that it would only lead to him being jeered at, but on some occasions he did need to consume enough nutrients to keep himself alive.

Tonight was no different than any other. He scanned his student ID card and entered the loud hall, filled with the noises of clinking silverware, laughter, and other young men and women talking. He walked straight over to the first line to be served, which was right at the edge of the room, where it opened up into the kitchen. There were labels above each food item for him and only him, the only blind student at the school. Roast beef, no. Mash, no. Mushy peas, no.

Lasagne. It was a safe enough choice, as far as canteen food went.

Sherlock got a serving of the dish, a cup of coffee, a piece of garlic toast on his tray. After adjusting his bag on his shoulder, he lifted his tray to turn and walk back to his seat.

It didn't last for long. One of the oldest students at the school--he'd been held back, no doubt, and was only there because his father was paying his way, Sherlock assumed--Sebastian Moran, walked past him, put his hand beneath the tray, and pushed it upwards, spilling both the lasagna and hot coffee directly onto his chest and stomach. The sauce and coffee splashed up onto his neck and chin, feeling like fiery darts piercing into his flesh.

It _hurt_ , but Sherlock did nothing but grunt, softly, and let his eyes squeeze shut only briefly.

"Sorry, Holmes," Sebastian drawled, and Sherlock knew he was smirking even though he couldn't see it. He also knew Sebastian wasn't actually sorry. "Didn't _see_ you there."

Some students laughed. A few said 'ohhh' or 'aww' softly, indicating that they sympathised with Sherlock, even if they weren't willing to do anything to help him.

Not that he needed help. He _never_ needed help.

Sherlock said nothing. He turned and set his tray down beside the trashcan and then walked to the corner of the room, at the only table available with only one seat. That was where he always sat. He lowered himself down into his chair and got a few napkins from the dispenser on the table, wiping his clothes and skin as clean as he could. Of course the material was stained, but he wasn't going to leave the dining hall yet. He wasn't going to run.

Instead, he opened his forensics book, one that he read for pleasure, and started on the next chapter, his head bowed low, facing the page even though it made no difference whatsoever.

 

John was sitting on the other side of the refectory when he'd heard the commotion. His head was down, forehead resting on one palm while the other hand flipped through the pages of his chemistry textbook, simultaneously highlighting passages he thought would be important, (which really ended up looking like entire pages were lit up like bloody Christmas). The first sign of anything being off was a great clatter of a tray and a dish smashing somewhere on the other side of the room, followed by a quiet group laughter.

John assumed someone had dropped their dinner, so when he glanced up, he expected to see someone bent down, cleaning up a mess.

Instead, what he saw was a tall, built blond man walking away, head turned a bit and laughing at someone.

Typical bully. Every school had one, and John recognized the type right away. He wasn't always the most observant type, but he knew a jock when he saw one, (as he himself had played on the football team at his now previous school--albeit, only when he was guaranteed a private locker room.)

And _that_ boy was certainly one.

Arsehole.

John was about to turn back to what he was doing, but he stopped when he saw who it was had been at the hand of the incident. Really, it didn't take any sort of genius to put two and two together.

Sherlock was walking across the room, his entire front dripping wet and clumps of red and white chunks falling from his clothes. His face was like stone, and John watched as a short, fat boy waddle after him from behind, mimicking his movements while a girl said, 'Oh my god, _stop,_ that's _horrible_.'

While giggling.

He watched as Sherlock sat down at the table, without even getting more food to replace the stuff that had been dumped on him, and opening up his book, far away from everyone else.

John ran his tongue over his lower lip before standing up. He carefully collected his books together and tossed them into his bag before slinging it over his shoulder. He picked up the remains of the apple he was eating and tossed it into the trash before crossing to the kitchen and going into the line again.

He picked out whatever he saw that was red and hot--looked like spaghetti and lasagna, so he picked the former--and used his student ID to pay for it. It wasn't technically his money, so it wasn't like he was going to be hurting from it.

When he walked over to where Sherlock was sitting, (ignoring the way his heart seemed to speed up again at the smell of what he was wearing) he set down the tray caddy-corner from him.

"I hear it's better to focus on a full stomach," he began, sliding the tray over to him. "At least, that's what I'll probably be telling people someday."

 

Him _again_?

Sherlock rubbed his hand over his face, glad that he'd managed to wipe all of the tomato sauce off of it before doing so. He just wanted to be left alone; why was that so much to ask? His clothes were wet and sticky, absolutely stinking because of the slop that had been pushed onto them, and now this boy was here, talking.

Why?

Sherlock could smell tomato sauce wafting up from the tray that had just been pushed towards him. He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed, not even trying to make it any less dramatic than it was. Why should he? He didn't ask for company. He didn't even want it.

Besides, why would he be doing anything nice for him in the first place? Sherlock hadn't done anything to warrant that. He had taken him to the Maths building, but only by coincidence, really. He hadn't intended to, and he'd certainly never invited the other boy to follow him there. He had just _done_ it.

Sherlock hadn't been polite. He hadn't been engaging. He didn't ask the boy where he'd come from or what he wanted to study at University; he didn't even ask his name.

"A teacher, then?" Sherlock asked, turning the page in his book without looking up at the young man standing beside his table. "I cannot imagine many professions that would involve telling someone how they can best focus. Something in the sciences, no doubt, seeing as how you were in Advanced Chemistry."

Sherlock lifted his hand, silencing the other boy from speaking even though he didn't know whether he'd intended to or not. "Or, perhaps, something in the medical field? It does seem that either is likely."

Again he turned the page in his book. All he had to do was touch the words, and his brain, seemingly, committed them to memory all on its own, with or without his consent.

Sherlock waved his hand, preventing the other from speaking. He didn't need to hear if he was right or wrong; he already knew he was right, and he didn't need the specifics of the boy's chosen profession. He just needed him to leave.

"You do not need to feel obligated to come and _console_ me. In fact, I would prefer that you do not. I am perfectly fine. A few minor burns around the neck and collar bones, nothing I cannot take care of once I am back in my room. Thank you; goodbye."

 

John wouldn't say he wasn't uncomfortable. At least just a little bit so. Sherlock was anything but open, and with every fiber of his presence he was telling John he was in no way interested in having a conversation with him of any kind.

John knew it had been a long time ago. Eight years was a long time for a person to change, (and lord knew John had in a lot of ways) and it was entirely possible that over the years, as things clouded his mind, the once upon a time he had had was quite romanticized from the eyes of a child.

Perhaps it wasn't actually anything like John had remembered it to be.

"Are you always this pleasant to talk to?" he asked, with no real malice in his voice at all. In fact, he was grinning, (albeit uncomfortably) just a bit. "And I don't feel obliged. Not really. You really don't seem that interested in making friends, so I can promise I'm not trying to get on your good side. Too much, anyway. I'll just be that one annoying conversation you had today."

He paused, just briefly, before glancing around at the refectory. Nobody was looking at them, those who were still there, but carrying on with their meals as is they hadn't just witnessed the only blind student getting completely humiliated.

John didn't understand that mentality at all. But then, he also didn't always know when not to get involved, if he could help himself.

He glanced over his shoulder, where he could see the back of the blond jock-looking boy waking around the corner and out of sight. If there was anyone in his way, he saw them move to the side immediately.

"Why'd he do that, anyway?" he asked. "Is he that desperate to show off, or are you targeted specifically?" John grinned again. "Knick his action man, did you? Steal his girl?"

 

Sherlock would be the first to admit (to himself) that he knew very little about human behaviour. He didn't understand why people did what they did; he didn't understand why they took it upon themselves to form relationships and friendships and actually _keep_ those friendships and relationships.

He didn't understand how they could be so content with being idiots. Who in their right mind would settle for that? Sherlock was the one often accused of being a psychopath, or 'psychotic', and yet he thought everyone _else_ were the lunatics.

Sherlock's stomach growled again and he immediately tightened his abdominal muscles to silence it. He didn't want to eat, not in front of this pesky boy that seemed insistent on talking to him every chance he got.

The Pest. Sherlock decided that would be his name for him. Was it immature? Very much so, but that was Sherlock. Sooner than later, probably tomorrow, he would learn the boy's proper name, but right now he was just The Pest.

At least he was right about one thing: Sherlock wasn't interested in making friends. He never had been. Well, not since his early, early childhood, but--

Immediately, he quenched the thoughts. He didn't need to be reminded of _that_. The excitement, the affection, the anticipation, the heartbreak, the fear, the guilt...

The guilt.

Leaning back in his chair, Sherlock crossed his arms and looked up at The Pest. Why had Sebastian Moran dumped his food all over him? Well, Sherlock didn't know what the exact thoughts going through his mind at the time were, but he knew it all boiled down to one thing.

"He does not like me. Very few people do, as a matter of fact, and I would prefer to keep it that way. I did not nick his action man, nor did I steal his girl. I've no interest in either of those things. Which, by the way, does beg the question, why do you seem to have such a keen interest in _me_?"

Sherlock didn't know if The Pest had engaged in other conversations throughout the day or not. Maybe he was already well on his way to making friends. Sherlock assumed not, though, because it would be very, very strange for him to continue trying to reach out to Sherlock if there were other people, willing to reciprocate, waiting in the wings.

 

"Oh, ah. No reason. I'm not, really. I just... Well."

John paused. Now would be the perfect opportunity to tell him. To tell him what he (thought) he knew. What he believed to be true, and who he was and who he thought _he_ was.

But like earlier, there was just something stopping him. Presented with the opportunity, he felt...anxious, really. Anxious and nervous and just a long-forgotten feeling of happiness that he was seeing this boy again, which was coupled with that jarring surreal-ness of the situation.

John hadn't thought about him every day, but that hasn't mean he hadn't forgotten about him. On occasion, it had still come back. A dream or a memory would filter through his conscious thoughts, triggered by a smell or a sight or a phrase, and all over again, John would wonder...

What happened?

And why after eight years was he still feeling the same amount of emotion that he had way back when? Surely that wasn't normal sentimentality for a seventeen-year-old boy.

"I'm John, by the way," he answered instead of answering the question presented to him. It was a common enough name. He was pretty certain there were at least three other Johns in this school alone. He took a seat across from him and sat down. He could see how the boy's eyebrows furrowed together, what he assumed was distaste at him sitting near him at all, but he didn't let it deter him.

If anything else, a simple conversation would do. It was this or nothing and John knew himself well enough to know it would be eating away at him later. He would be kicking himself for not taking the opportunity to just...talk to this person again.

"You should eat," he attempted, pushing the tray over to him again. "It would be terribly rude to let two meals go to waste on your behalf."

 

John.

The name brought back a flood of memories, from the first time the boy took his hand, to them buying a smell-maker and weapons at the toy shop, to them talking on the phone late at night and meeting up with one another at the park, John coming to his birthday party...

There were several Johns at the school, so Sherlock didn't give it a second thought. The first and second time he'd heard the name, he had been unable to help the excitement that rose up in his stomach. That had been years ago, though, and over the past eight years Sherlock had come to accept that not everyone named 'John' was his long-lost, only friend.

 _That_ John was dead. Sherlock hated to think about what had happened to him. Vivisection? Amputation? Dissection? Torture?

The following few weeks after Sherlock had last seen John, he'd had nightmares. He had dreamt about John lying on a smooth, cold table whilst scientists in long white coats and thick goggles stared down at him, evil smiles on their faces and long needles in their hands.

They laughed at John, and then they killed him.

Sherlock swallowed thickly. He hadn't thought about those dreams in a while, now. He never did, until he met a new John. Then everything came to the surface. The rest of the time, his heart was kept cold enough to not think about such things, at least, not consciously.

'It would be terribly rude to let two meals go to waste on your behalf.'

Sherlock hummed. "It _would_ be terribly rude, wouldn't it?" he murmured, then put his hand on the corner of the tray and pushed, sliding it across the table until it slid off and loudly clattered on the ground, pasta and tomato sauce spilling onto the tile.

He'd proved his point.

Sherlock smiled at the other boy. Obviously the smile was fake, forced, but Sherlock was making every effort to appear to be cheerful, although he knew that John knew he was pretending.

"Goodbye, _John_."

 

To say that John was surprised was an understatement. It was more like shock, really, and when the tray clattered to the floor for the second time in a ten-minute period, more heads turned to look in their direction. John couldn't hear what they were saying, but he could see heads turning to look in their direction.

John felt his face heat up. He certainly looked quite stupid now, didn't he? He guessed what they all thought; new boy tries to befriend the social outcast, not to be welcomed with open arms and a grateful smile, but a reverse humiliation and rejection. Sherlock didn't look even remotely fazed; he just continued to stare at John with that too-sweet, too-fake smile.

"Okay. Right."

He wasn't sure what else he could say, because this Sherlock, this _person_ , was not the person that John had known eight years ago. Even if he had remembered John, he didn't seem...he didn't seem like it would make much of a difference anyway, would it? A person who acted like this to someone who was being perfectly nice surely wasn't a person who would care about a person he'd known briefly, nearly a decade earlier.

His stomach felt like it had dropped, just a bit. He was better, now, he thought, at controlling his emotions, and controlling the... animalistic side of him. At one point, he might have whined or felt his tail try to go in-between his legs, but now, he was distanced enough that he was able to let it go without _too_ much disappointment.

Too much.

He stood up and pulled his bag over his shoulder once more before pushing the chair in. He didn't bother picking up the tray of food on the floor, even if he knew he should. He was, admittedly, a little too embarrassed already. He wasn't the type who cared for appearances for appearances sake, but he at least had enough dignity not to pick up something he hadn't caused.

He didn't say anything more, though he did stand there, staring at the blind boy for a moment longer, debating on it. He decided to say nothing, though, in favor of keeping his own disappointment, (and maybe a snarky remark himself) in check. He walked past him and out the refectory doors, where he could make his way to up to the boys' dormitories.

Today had been exhausting, in more ways than one. The best thing he decided was to call it an early night.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the delay! Editing the chapters is a veeeery time-consuming process!

Sherlock stayed in the refectory for another hour. He heard students come and go, eventually dwindling until he was the only one remaining, and then and only then did he get up and go back to his room, on the other side of campus.

He needed a shower, badly. His clothes were already beginning to smell soured, rotten, and the shirt would have to be tossed out. Tomato sauce wasn't a stain he felt like scrubbing out of his clothes. Besides, it was just a shirt.

It was dark out, not that Sherlock knew or cared. It was always dark for him, and had been for the majority of his life. He was used to it. That was both good and bad, he supposed. He had the advantage of never feeling at a disadvantage when it was dark, whereas someone who could see might do. Sherlock was familiar with his surroundings because he had spent so much time feelings things, touching them with both his hands and his cane. He didn't get lost. Ever.

Not on campus, anyway.

Once he was back at the dorms, Sherlock went into his room and stripped. He changed into a pair of boxers and his robe, then went to the loo and took a long, cold shower, making sure that he had washed every trace of tomato sauce and coffee from his skin. The burns were blistering a little, so Sherlock took the opportunity to lightly trace his fingers over them, just out of curiosity. Even if it was his own body, he wanted to study himself. He wanted to study _something_.

After drying himself off, Sherlock put his robe and boxers back on. He brushed his teeth at the sink, ignoring the other boys he heard coming and going to and from the bathroom and showers. Fortunately, none of them said a word to him.

Sherlock went to his room and dropped off his clothes, then went into the common area and bought a package of crisps from the vending machine. He had no plans the rest of the night, none whatsoever, so he went back to his room and turned on the telly, which was always tuned to the science channel. Tonight's feature was about outer space, of all things.

He listened, but he didn't enjoy anything he was hearing, simply because it didn't seem to matter.

 

John didn't see Sherlock again for the remainder of the week.

Well. He _saw_ him, but he didn't _approach_ him.

But it didn't mean he didn't think about him a lot, even if he wished he didn't, despite knowing that the other boy was completely oblivious to his existence.

Living in the dormitories meant that he saw him on a daily basis, but only at odd hours. It seemed the other boy didn't adhere to the typical routine of seven to three hours of classes, then dinner, then back to the dorms. John rarely saw him in class. He didn't see him at dinner, nor at the dormitories. Only coming and going from god knew where, and at strange, late hours. The only reason John was even awake himself was because he had so much bloody homework to get through, so many damn readings and things to catch up on, (things he didn't always even understand) that he was up every single night until at least three in the morning.

He'd begun finding his way around a bit better, at least, but he was pretty certain he had only explored a portion of the place.

He met a few people here and there. Mike Stamford was in a lot of his own classes, and while John didn't foresee going out with him on the weekends for drinks and clubs, he was a nice enough guy.

On Friday, late in the afternoon, John went up to the dorms, waiting for everyone else to clear out, (he found late-afternoons and late-nights were the best time for showers, as nobody ever took showers then) to shower. His prosthetic ears had to come off before the shower, as did the pins in his hair, but they always went straight back on immediately after he was dry enough.

_Immediately_.

After getting dressed in something that thankfully was not a school uniform, he headed off campus for a much needed drink.

With Mike Stamford.

As it turned out, he ended up being the only person he was going to be having drinks with for the time after all. He'd said he was inviting a few others, but John didn't know them. John still didn't really know anyone, and everyone else seemed to come from a different class than he did.

The kind with money.

On the way out, John slipped his phone into his back pocket, along with his wallet, before heading towards the doors.

Only to come face-to-face with Sherlock, who seemed to be coming back in.

"Oh."

He hadn't meant to say that, but he was standing right in front of him, the tip of Sherlock's cane smacking against his shoe, but he didn't move.

"Hi."

There was a moment where John contemplated moving out of the way, not speaking at all, but his mouth seemed to be moving before he could stop it.

"Plans for the weekend?"

 

Sherlock was doing very well in his classes, but sometimes he was forced to ask, why? What was the reason behind it? He could read a book and remember all of it, choosing to delete the information that was unimportant, so what was the point of being at school?

Sherlock had no idea whatsoever about his career after graduation. He would go off to University, of course, but when all was said and done, what was he going to do with his life? Study? Write? Become a teacher? Be in a lab for the rest of his days?

There were many possibilities, but Sherlock didn't know which he would actually take and run with. On one hand, some sounded entertaining, but other days when he thought of them, he wanted nothing less.

Sherlock hadn't spoken with John for the entire week, which was perfectly fine with him. He had nearly forgotten about their interaction at all, until he ran--nearly literally--into the other boy again.

And, again, John felt the need to strike up a conversation.

Sherlock sighed heavily, lifting his head up high as he waited for John to spit out whatever it was he was trying to say. He sounded nervous, but Sherlock wasn't surprised by. Most people were when they were interacting with him. He _did_ have a bit of a reputation.

"Plans for the weekend?" he repeated, lifting an eyebrow. He was surprised that he was actually being asked, only because everyone he knew that he didn't have plans. Maybe John just hadn't learned that about him, yet.

"No. No plans. Reading. Sleeping. Going into town, perhaps. Nothing of import." Sherlock tapped his cane against John's side, trying to get him to move. "You are going to the pub with Mike Stamford, I hear. I suppose he is a nice enough fellow, if you care about such things--which you obviously do--but I do wonder how you are going to manage to stay awake with him. He is _quite_ dull. Now, if you would be so kind, get out of my way."

 

John didn't know why he bothered sticking around for conversation with Sherlock, it was more than obvious that the boy didn't want any part of it, but for the life of him, he kept going with it.

He _did_ step to the side to allow Sherlock to pass him, but as he did, he continued.

"He's nice enough, yeah. He's helping tutor me with chemistry, but I think so far I've done more dozing off than actual studying. I feel sorry for his future students already."

He huffed a little laugh before shrugging, watching Sherlock pass him. He stared at him from behind, at the way he moved about with ease, touching the tables and walls and books on the shelves like he were looking at each and everything thing.

He didn't have a cane the last time John saw him.

His smell was powerful in the room, deserted of all other students besides them. Maple and bacon, earth...

When he had passed John, he had been sorely tempted to close his eyes and just _breathe_.

"Do you like to drink?" he found himself asking, before Sherlock could disappear up the steps to the boys’ rooms. "I mean, you're welcome to come, if you'd like. It's not far. A night out sounds a bit more enjoyable than sitting alone reading."

He slipped his hands into his pockets. He knew why he was asking. He was attempting, like he had in the refectory, to reach out and do... something. He didn't know why it was so hard for him just to tell him who he was, ask if he even _remembered_ the little boy with a dog’s ears and tail.

Not that it would be something common enough to be forgotten easily, but with what had happened to John after that incident, anything was possible.

 

Sherlock lingered on the first step long enough to shake his head. "I do not like to drink, no," he answered. Sherlock's vices laid in other things, when he was able to get a hold of them. Cigarettes, mostly, although he had once tried something stronger--seven percent stronger, he liked to say, although it wasn't accurate in the least.

"I do not care to go out, either," he told John. "As I said, I may go into town, but that will be tomorrow and it will not involve any alcohol. I need a few body parts and some mice."

Normally when he told people things along those lines, it was when they stopped talking to him. Mice were one thing, but body parts? He had been caught experimenting on human fingers by his roommate the year before, and it had led into a spat with his parents, who had to donate fifteen-thousand pounds to get the schoolboard to let him stay. That had been the first, and only, time when his stellar grade-point average hadn't been enough to keep him at the school without complaint.

The mice and body parts were both for an experiment. And, maybe, he would keep them around afterwards.

The mice, that is. Not the body parts.

"You would do well to get yourself a different tutor," Sherlock added as he began to ascend the steps. "As friendly as he may be, he is certainly not the best instructor. Much of the material he does not even comprehend, but he thinks he does, so he thinks that enables him to teach others. You will find out in the worst possible way how wrong he is. Then again, most people are, save for myself."

The best chemistry student at the school was Sherlock himself, of course, but he didn't volunteer. He had never tutored anybody. Bloody hell, there was no way that it would go over well. He didn't care to help others, nor did he have the patience to do so. He would become irritated and snap; they would be upset, and it would end up being a waste of both his time and his student's.

Most of the other students were going into town, so Sherlock kept his door open when he returned to his room, just to let it air out a bit. It smelled of cigarette smoke, rubbing alcohol, and the spicy bacon-maple cologne that he sprayed on his neck every morning.

Rather than reading, Sherlock got out a piece of blank sheet music, the lines lifted in braille streaks so he would be able to write down his music. He used a very sharp pencil to punch holes in the back of the paper, making the note appear in the proper place on the other side, so he could go back and read it later without having to bother memorising it. It was a nuisance, but he wasn't going to let his blindness prevent him from doing something that he actually did take pleasure in.

 

John didn't follow Sherlock when he walked away, even if he had been about to say something. Before he could get the chance, the other boy was walking away from him, ending the conversation once more.

John stared at the steps he disappeared up to, waited at least another moment or two before turning and continuing on his way.

Maybe that would be it, then. He'd tried, hadn't he? More than once. He'd been nice, pleasant, but Sherlock was having none of it, and once again John was reminded that, if this was the sort of person he was now, there was simply no way he would remember or care about who John was.

He remembered... He remembered Sherlock being smart. Really smart. He remembered making him a pirate hat, (though he couldn't remember the colour now) and he remembered them sneaking out and going ice skating together. He remembered the woods, too, and sitting up against him under a tree while it rained hard, the only thing keeping them safe and dry being the canopy of leaves about their heads.

But he didn't remember this.

His night ended up going as he, (and Sherlock) had expected. They went to a little club, where rather than dancing or socializing, Mike was much more interested in sitting up at the front nursing his beer, talking about this or that, while John tried not to let on _too_ much how bored he was. He didn't want to be rude and leave Mike alone, but while they were sitting and talking, (mostly about school) there was a group of girls dancing _right over there_.

John was no stranger to attraction to pretty girls. He was a hormonal seventeen-year-old after all, and he knew how easily it was to be turned on and how important, in that teen-puppy love, (no pun intended) could seem. While John hadn't ever had a serious girlfriend, he still liked date.

That surely wasn't going to happen sitting there with Mike all night, either.

But, because John was nice, he stayed, and continued to drink.

In the end, he ended up having a total of three beers. Not enough to get him drunk by any stretch, but enough that Mike's constant droning was more bearable.

It was nearing midnight by the time John decided he had had enough and opted to head back to campus. He seemed to be the only one, though, as the common area of the boys dormitories were all but deserted when he arrived, save for one chubby boy with glasses who most certainly didn't have anywhere else to be that evening.

On his way up to his room, John caught the smell again, coming from down the hall.

God, that _smell_.

It was enough to make John groan, softly. It seemed heightened even more so, with a slight buzz, and it wafted through his senses like it were silently luring him. Spicy, earthy, mouth-watering. It pulled at something deep inside of John and before he could fit his key into his room's lock, he was turning towards the other end of the hall.

Maybe Sherlock was in there. Maybe not, but surely, surely John could just... just see. Just see for himself.

He followed his nose down the hall, his ears perking up a little more the closer he got, but never enough to break the pins that kept them confined.

He knew which was Sherlock’s room immediately. The door was wide open, but there was no sign of the boy at all.

Just a powerful, undeniable smell of him.

John didn't know why he did it, and he surely didn't think he would had he been sober, but he found himself walking right inside, and looking around.

Books _everywhere_. Papers strewn about. A violin case--'Do you think I'll be able to play it?'--an unmade bed that he walked over to, an ashtray on the window...

Undeniably the same person.

 

Sherlock's night progressed about exactly as he had expected it to.

He went to the library at eight-thirty, shortly before it closed, and got a book from their _very_ limited braille section. It was a fictional book about a group of naval officers, and Sherlock read through it only to find out what was historically and technologically inaccurate about it.

He deleted the plot from his memory immediately after.

It was a game that he played with himself, finding things to read or watch and then picking apart what was wrong about them. It had been more fun when he had been younger, but at least now it fueled the cynical, smug aspects of his personality.

Not that they needed any help being fueled.

It was late in the evening before Sherlock decided to try to go to sleep. He knew that because the clock on the nightstand beside his bed spoke aloud, alerting him of the hour, every hour. Not only that, but Sherlock liked to think he had a sort of internal chronometer that did an excellent job all on its own at keeping him aware of the time at all hours.

He took his toothbrush down to the loo and brushed his teeth, then splashed some cold water onto his face. He stared blankly ahead of him and reached out, lightly tracing his fingertips across the mirror he knew to be in front of him.

It had been eight years since he had last seen himself. Most people looked in mirrors on a daily basis, adjusting their hair, washing their face, brushing their teeth, applying makeup, whatever it was. Sherlock combed his curls as best as he could, but he could never _really_ know how they looked--only get an idea from feeling them. He could never _really_ know how his face appeared after he'd been punched, only make an educated guess given the size and pain level from the bruise or cut. He could never _really_ know if his skin was tanned or pale, not without asking somebody.

And he certainly wasn't going to do that.

Sherlock walked back to his room. He could hear some of the other boys getting in, whooping and hollering, very obviously drunk, or at least buzzed. They stumbled noisily to their rooms, laughing and cutting up with one another. Sherlock found it all to be really bloody hateful.

As soon as he arrived at his room, Sherlock knew there was somebody inside.

But not just any somebody: John. John _again_.

Being blind, Sherlock's other senses were heightened (people said that was a myth, but _he_ didn’t believe it), especially smelling and hearing. Not only that, though, but there seemed to be an almost other-worldly ability to sense when somebody was watching him or following him, or if someone was nearby. Maybe it was smells and sounds working together, sending his brain clues before he was even aware of it happening.

This time, though, Sherlock knew what it was: John's cologne and breathing. He sensed the boy and then he smelled and heard him, and _then_ Sherlock loudly cleared his throat.

"I believe it is considered rude to enter one's room without permission," he said, walking inside and setting his toothbrush and toothpaste down on top of his desk. He crossed his arms and stared in John's direction, able to hear his breathing even more clearly, now.

"Will you please explain why you are so bloody determined to continue on associating with me? I know for a fact that I have made it _quite_ clear that I have no interest in doing so with you."

 

John was a bit startled when Sherlock came back and caught him snooping around his room.

Well. Not snooping. He wasn't snooping, just…looking.

But now he was all but cornered, he couldn't just duck out the door without a word, because Sherlock was blocking his way out. John was in the process of picking up the little bottle of bacon-maple cologne, fingers tracing over the bottle, and he took his hand back immediately.

"Is it really necessary for you to be this much of an arse?" he asked quickly, maybe just a _little_ bit on the embarrassed side for being caught. "I haven't given you any reason not to like me, but for some reason, you walk around with a chip on your shoulder."

He really didn't understand. It was one thing if someone was having a bad day on occasion, but he'd never seen someone act like this much of a dickhead for no apparent reason.

He paused, just long enough to take a little breath, before looking over at Sherlock's desk.

"What are you doing, anyway? What is all this? You said you were getting mice heads earlier. I didn't think you were _serious_."

 

Sherlock couldn't help but smirk. Most people didn't think he was serious when he talked about his experiments. He didn't find it discouraging in the least; actually, he thought it was amusing when people doubted him, only to find out that he had been speaking truthfully later on.

"You came into my room uninvited," Sherlock pointed out. "That in and of itself would give me a reason not to like you."

Why did it matter? Why did John care so much? Nobody had ever actively tried so hard to get Sherlock o engage with him, and for the life of him, Sherlock couldn't understand why he was. As he had said, he'd made it clear that he had no interest in talking to John or 'befriending' him--whatever it was that people did--so why was he still trying?

His lips, which were still curled up slightly in a smirk, lowered, and he brushed past John and took his button-up shirt and trousers off, leaving him in only a plain white t-shirt and his boxers. Sherlock had no reason whatsoever to be embarrassed about being seen in a state of undress; it wasn't as though he could see how John was reacting to him, and even if he could see, he wouldn't care. After all, they all had the same basic body parts. What was there to be embarrassed about, even if he had been completely nude?

"I did not get my mice," he pointed out, waving his hand towards his desk with a scowl. "The man I was going to get them from did not answer his phone. He's got a few cats, keen on hunting, they are. They've delivered all sorts of animal corpses to him, and then he, in turn, delivers them to me." Sherlock shrugged and added, "Sometimes they are not yet corpses, but they are by the time I've finished with them. Usually."

Unashamedly, Sherlock pulled the blankets up and slipped down beneath them, then pulled them tight around his shoulders once his head was comfortably resting on his pillow.

"Turn the light off when you leave. And for heaven's sake, rinse your mouth out. You've got terrible beer-breath."

 

"Animal corpses. Right. And you just... experiment on them?"

John couldn't help but ask, but the way Sherlock didn't answer, he was a bit uncertain of whether or not he wanted the explanation.

Depending on the animal, especially.

He watched Sherlock get into bed, not even caring that John was still in the room with him.

In a way... It was almost amusing. Almost. Maybe just because he had had a few drinks, but seeing this boy completely uncaring that John was still there, was literally watching him as he was about to go to sleep was kind of funny. He was either completely serious or terribly, terribly dramatic.

"And I thought _I_ had the good nose."

He mumbled it, with only barely a smile on his face as he looked back around the room. Sherlock's cane was leaning up against the desk, his cologne right beside it.

John ran his tongue over his lower lip and touched it once more, before the book on the desk caught his eye. On the cover was a ship, with a single naval officer on the cover looking wistfully out at the ocean. The title, he couldn't be sure, because instead of words there were little bumps.

"A fan of the ocean, are you?" he asked him, not even caring that Sherlock was more than likely trying to sleep. "Was it any good? I was always a fan of treasure-hunting stories, myself."

 

Sherlock didn't know why John was remaining in his room. He had tried being rude, but since John seemed so intent on being polite, he had tried another tactic--acting as if he was going to sleep. Even that, though, had failed, and still John remained.

Apparently nothing was effective in making this boy take the hint.

'And I thought _I_ had the good nose.'

Sherlock only scoffed at that. He was the one with the better nose, thank you very much. It was being blind that had done it to him. His other senses hadn't heightened out of will; they had heightened out of necessity.

"Stop touching my things," he grumbled, although he didn't know if John had actually picked his book up or if he was merely looking at it. "I'm trying to go to sleep; can you not see that?"

He almost said something when John mentioned that he was a fan of treasure-hunting stories, but decided against it. After all, Sherlock hadn't read any in years. His braille copy of Treasure Island had been read and looked through so many times that the binding had come undone; the pages had been torn, frayed, yellowed. He had read the book several times over, picturing John and himself as the cabin boys on the pirate ship.

It wasn't exactly accurate to the story, but he had missed John, so the plot was only secondary.

"It was not very good, by the bye," Sherlock answered, already feeling his body succumbing to sleep. His eyes were heavy, and speaking was becoming more and more of a chore. "I wanted pirates. There weren't any." Sleep was drifting over him harder, now, like a thick blanket that was being pulled over his body.

"Turn the light off. Shut and lock the door."

 

Once again, Sherlock was ending their conversation in such a manner that left John really no alternative than to just go along with it. He watched him roll over, facing away from John, and he softly set down the book that wasn't very good he was holding on the desk.

Well. At least he could say he had tried.

But he wouldn't be trying again.

He stepped out of Sherlock's room without another word, turning off the light as he did so and pushing in the lock on his door so that when he closed it, Sherlock would be permanently shut off from the rest of the world, until he so chose to emerge again.

Now he had his answer, at least. A resolution from a childhood fantasy. It wasn't a big deal--surely it wasn't--that this was who that boy was growing into. It had been eight years, after all.

Who was he to think Sherlock wouldn't have grown up?

And anyway, it wasn't like John had had a lot riding on it. He had been surprised and happy (more like elated) to see Sherlock Holmes again, but it wasn't like he had expected the two would be going off playing pirates again. They weren't kids.

After returning to his own room, John changed into a tee-shirt, a pair of pyjama bottoms, gathered his toothbrush and went to the bathrooms to clean up. There was nobody else in there, but he wouldn't allow himself to free himself of his constraints again until he was in the safety and privacy of his own room.

And even once he was, he checked twice to make sure that the door was locked fully, (as he did every night) before taking the pins out of his head and allowing his ears to spring back up again.

And, like always, he fell asleep massaging their sore, abused muscles.

 

Sherlock had been in the laboratory before, far too many times. One time was too many, but he'd been coming here for the past eight years, never by choice, and never for anything good. It had been a while since his last visit, though. He'd come far more often in childhood and then, he had noticed, there seemed to be a pattern. Whenever he encountered somebody with a certain name, a very specific name that reminded him of the boy from his past.

The worst part of it all was that it was both a laboratory and an operating room rolled into one. There was only one light, blindingly bright and fluorescent, blinking, right above what appeared to be an operating table surrounded by tall, muscular men wearing dirty scrubs and surgical masks. Sometimes it was a dentist's chair, but usually a stainless steel table covered in dried, sticky blood.

Along the walls were rows and rows of cages, loud noises emitting from them. Sherlock could make out dogs of all sort, young and whimpering and whining, and in the cages that didn't hold puppies there were little boys, all of them blonde, tears streaming down their faces.

Then there were screams. Some of them were entirely human while some sounded like a cross between a canine noise and a human crying out, but they were all ear-splitting, enough to make Sherlock squeeze his eyes shut and hold his hands firmly over his ears.

It didn't help. The sounds and sights were inside his head. When he was in the lab, he _wished_ he was blind.

A loud whirring got his attention, the sound of a saw. Sherlock had thought it was a drill at first, but every time he stepped closer to the table (and he didn't know _why_ he did so), he saw the familiar form of John Watson, nine years old, strapped down to the table, naked. One of the men was holding his tail, pulling it away from his body, taut, and making John whimper--although the fear was probably playing a role in that, too--while another man was holding a circular saw out towards Sherlock.

And he took it. He could see his own little eight-year-old hands taking the heavy device, and he stepped forward again and again. John caught sight of him, as he did every time, and he whined Sherlock's name, tears spilling out of his eyes.

"Sherlock," John whispered, the word high-pitched as it mixed with the canine sound of distress, "Sherlock, please! You're my friend. You're my friend, Sherlock, _please_!"

Sherlock was crying, too. Even as the tears bubbled out of his eyes and dripped down onto his cheeks, he held the spinning saw against John's tail, fur immediately flying off it before blood started to gush and splash out, splattering onto Sherlock's hands.

The last thing he heard was John's scream.

"JOHN!"

Sherlock jolted up in bed so quickly that it shook. He had screamed at the top of his lungs and he knew it; he could only hope that no-one had actually heard him.

His heart was racing so fast and loud that he could hear it in his ears and feel it pounding in his neck and wrists. To try and keep up with the blood rushing through his body, he was hyperventilating, panting hoarse, short breaths that did no good for him whatsoever.

His face was tear-stained; Sherlock noticed that right away. He reached up to wipe the moisture away from his eyes and cheeks, but his face was still hot, still red.

It had been years since he'd dreamt about that room, dreamt about being responsible for his only friend's death. Sherlock felt bloody sick at the thought. Physically ill, literally, so he got out of bed with one hand on his stomach and moved as quickly as he could out of his room.

The loo. He needed the loo _immediately_ , if the bile rising up in his throat was anything to go by.

He heard other boys in the corridor, freshly woken up to start their day, and he did his best to just brush past them. He'd left his cane in his room, desperate to just get out of it. He knew they were staring at him; he could _feel_ it, but he just kept going towards his destination. He didn't know if they had heard him shout for his dead friend or not, but he did know that they could see his red face and hear his quick breaths.

Thankfully, the bathroom was relatively empty. Sherlock went into the first stall and dropped down onto his knees, immediately retching over the toilet. Tears sprang up in his eyes again, but at least these weren't his fault, rather, they were an unfortunate side effect that accompanied vomiting.

And _all_ of this was an unfortunate side effect that accompanied being responsible for his only friend's death.

 

One of the biggest problems with living with a whole floor of other people was that John was always hearing things. Normal things, like people coming and going, walking down the halls or playing their music too-loudly, but because John's senses were heightened to almost annoyingly-good extremes, sometimes he heard things he didn't want to hear.

The boy in the next room over, for example, who snuck his girlfriend in every night. Most nights he placed a pillow over his head to try and drown out the sounds. Other times he tried to make it a game, to see how many times he could count the same phrase--'oh god'--in one session.

It was voyeuristic and probably a little weird, but John liked to try and make the best of a situation, if he could. It didn't happen often, after all.

He didn't know how it was possible to hear that, though, enough to wake him out of a deep sleep from down the hall.

His name. Screamed.

His eyes shot open and he sat up quickly, ears perking right up as he looked wildly about the room.

He could hear movement from outside from the boys still awake, as well as see the lights from the hall spilling into the cracks of his room. His first thought, of course, was that something was wrong. He'd heard his name-- _his_ name--that was for sure, but he didn't know who or why.

If there was one thing about John that he didn't think would ever change, it was his inability not to get involved. Now was just such an occasion.

It was entirely possible it was a different John someone was yelling for, but John didn't stick around long enough to wait and see. As was his way, he rushed head-first into something without thinking things through thoroughly. It had gotten him into trouble on more than one occasion, but it rarely seemed to stop him.

There were a few boys in the halls, and John could hear them talking, looking down at the bathroom and murmuring things like, "I don't know, he probably had too much to drink. He just booked it to the loo. Maybe it was because he couldn't see how many shots he was taking. Ha!"

It was probably a good thing that John hadn't stayed long enough to ask questions, as he had completely forgotten to take care of two little problems sticking out the top of his head.

When he made it to the bathroom, John knew right away that it was Sherlock in the open, first stall, but even if it hadn't been, he would have been able to tell just by his scent.

And he was...retching. Breathing heavily.  Gasping, like he was trying to get a deep breath but _couldn't_.

John worried if he was having some sort of asthma attack.

Immediately, John came up behind him and placed his hand on his back, before he too went down to one knee behind him.

"Hey, it's okay--breathe, yeah? Try to calm down. Just take a deep breath."

 

"Don't _touch_ me!"

Sherlock hated being touched. He hadn't used to mind it nearly as much, but ever since John's death (or, at least, what Sherlock assumed had been the precursor to it, that bloody birthday party), he hadn't liked it.

As a child, Sherlock didn't know why that was. He'd been annoyed when his parents gave him hugs, or when his mother or father insisted that he hold their hand when they go out, but he'd done it. Sometimes he didn't even mind it. But after his birthday party, Sherlock hadn't wanted to touch anyone, at any time. He went out of his way to avoid it, and if someone did it to him, he would pull away in disgust.

The last person Sherlock had touched because he had actually wanted to had been John, right before he left his birthday party. He'd hugged the boy tight, kissed his cheek, apologised for being the reason that he was going to die.

An apology was useless. Sherlock had known that then and he knew it now. He wondered if he was the last thing that John had thought about, although he knew that was a rather arrogant and foolish thing to think. John had only known him for a few weeks; what were the chances that John thought of him?

Logic didn't help Sherlock with this, though. All he could think about regarding John's final moments was him whimpering and crying, thinking about how Sherlock was 'sorry' for being the reason that he had _died_.

And been tortured, of course. Like in the dream.

Sherlock pulled away from John--that blasted name!--and leaned against the wall of the stall. He reached forward blindly, feeling around until his fingertips brushed against the lever, and then he flushed the toilet, sending both bile and half-digested crisps down the drain. He pulled his knees up towards his chest and sighed, the first actual, long breath that he'd been able to suck down since waking up.

"I imagine you heard me say your name," he murmured, his voice hoarse. He cleared his throat, but it didn't seem to help. "Rest assured, I was not talking about _you_. When I was a child--"

Immediately, Sherlock paused. Why in the world was he about to bring that up? Bloody hell! He had no reason whatsoever to tell _this_ John about _that_ John, so Sherlock pressed his lips together and shook his head, flicking his wrist to wave off his own words.

"As you can see, I am fine, thank you." Sherlock lifted his head, staring at John through white, cloudy eyes that were not currently hid by his sunglasses. "Did they send you in here to spy on me?"

 

"What? Spy on you? No, of course not. Christ. What the hell would anyone want to spy on you about?"

John guessed a lot of things, actually, but more in the curious way and not the malicious way, which was no doubt what Sherlock was referring to.

Despite being told not to touch him, John continued doing so anyway. His hand went to his shoulder, and because John had the leverage of being on his haunches, he was looking down at him.

Sherlock looked a mess; hair in disarray, face white, sweat lining his brow. The sickly sort of look that came when someone spent the last few minutes dry-heaving into a toilet.

"Just let me help you," he said, keeping his voice down for the boys he could hear passing outside the bathroom. "Please?"

He ran his tongue over his lower lip. This was the closest physically they had been since John had first arrived at this new school, and he was able to see things and smell things on Sherlock that were, (albeit embarrassingly) intoxicating.

It had been what John had remembered most about Sherlock; his _smell_. It was a weird detail for anyone else, no doubt, but for John, it was far more than 'this person smells nice'.

Sherlock's scent had the power to make John's mouth physically water. His stomach clench. A puppy-like whine catch in his throat.

Because it was that smell and that person associated with that John had grown to think of as _his_ person as a nine-year-old boy.

"You're a bit out of it, aren't you?" John asked, lips quirking in a small smile. "Just... let me help you back to your room, at least. And then I'll leave you alone. Promise."

It wasn't just his familiarity that was doing all of this, of course. John already knew he wanted to be a doctor someday. He'd always liked the idea of one, and he liked the idea of saving people's lives. He cared for people, maybe more than he should at times, and letting someone sit on a bathroom floor wasn't much pleasing to him.

Some might call it a hero complex, but John wanted to think it was a bit nobler than that.

 

Sherlock knew for a fact that he didn't need help getting back to his room. He knew exactly where it was and how many steps it would take to get there. True, he didn't have his cane with him, and he may very well get tripped on the way back, but it didn't matter. He would be _fine_.

"No," he told John, using the wall of the stall to push himself back up into a standing position. He lifted the bottom hem of his shirt up to his face and wiped the residual sweat, tears, and saliva away from his skin. "I am fine, and I certainly do not need any assistance in returning to my room."

In their limited interaction, Sherlock knew John wasn't going to let it slide. He'd said himself, 'Let me help you back to your room, at least. And then I'll leave you alone. Promise.'

Sherlock couldn't say that he actually believed John's promise, but he did believe John wouldn't leave him alone until he let him at least help with something.

"If you wish to help me," Sherlock began, speaking slowly because he was in disbelief that he was actually saying what he was, "you may accompany me into town. So that we are clear, I do not _need_ help. I do not _need_ you to come with me. Frankly, I do not even want you to. I am only allowing it because you seem to have an overwhelming desire to make yourself useful. As of yet, your attempts at doing so have been unsuccessful."

He really didn't want (or need) John to come with him, but at least it would be convenient. John could carry things for him, do any talking that he didn't want to, make crossing the street and walking down it easier...

Again--Sherlock didn't need the help, and he didn't even want it.

But if it was available, he would be a fool to not take it, just this once.

Sherlock stepped past John and left the stall, walking over to the sink so he could splash water onto his face and rinse out his mouth.

"Unless, of course, you are busy today."

 

To say that John was surprised by Sherlock’s offer was an understatement. He was more than surprised, he was almost a little shocked, and it took him a moment to realize that Sherlock wasn't actually joking or being anything but serious.

"No," he said once he found his voice again, scrambling back up to his feet and brushing his knees off. (The floor of the bathroom was a bit wet, but of what he didn't care to know).

"No, I'm not busy. I was just going to study all day, but where's the excitement in that? No, I can come with you."

He joined the other boy at the sink and put his hands under the water to wash them quickly. He couldn't believe that Sherlock was asking him that. He offered just to walk him back to his room, but instead was being asked to accompany him into town the next morning, (likely in a few hours, considering the sun would be up shortly).

"What do you need to get?"

He assumed the essentials. Deodorant and soap, maybe. Shampoo or snacks to keep in his room. Those were the only things John could think of needing in town, as most everything else was provided for by the school, save for entertainment.

John was beginning to realize there wasn't actually quite a lot of that at all. The school seemed to pride itself on being elite, on focusing on academia and a few select activists, such as sports and music. That was it.

It wasn't like at his previous school, where they had a theatre department, cheer squads, fun events.

This was a whole new world, where even saying good morning to the receptionist in the main office was met with a sniff and a crisp reply, as if someone had more important things to do than wish a person good morning.

On his second day, John heard a professor tell a student he could get partial bonus points on his exam if he wrote out the entirety of the Acts of Parliament.

In Latin.

"Where do you want to meet you?"

 

There was no doubt in Sherlock's mind that John would say yes to going into town with him. The boy seemed so desperate to get to know him.

Sherlock had never witnessed anything quite like it before. He did wonder if it was his looks or his intelligence that attracted John to him. He knew for a fact that it wasn't his personality, unless he was a masochist. Therefore, it had to be something else. His height? His hair colour? His eyes? No, not them, certainly not...

It had to be his intelligence. Sherlock didn't know what he himself looked like anymore, save for feeling his own face and getting a mental image that he (assumed) was fairly accurate, but the idea of anyone being with another person just because of their appearance was so difficult for him to comprehend that he didn't see how it could even be possible.

And yet, he knew very well that it was. People--himself included--could be, and often were, incredibly shallow.

"I am getting my mice heads and some human teeth," he told John as he dried his hands. He was sure that, if anyone else had been in the loo with them, he would have gotten a few stares.

"Perhaps some Chinese takeout as well. I am sick of eating crisps and canteen slop."

Moving towards the door, Sherlock pulled it open and then glanced over his shoulder. "I am going to get dressed and then I will be ready to leave. It will take us half an hour to get there by bus."

Without another word, Sherlock left the bathroom and walked back to his room. He kept his hand on the wall, tracing over the cool glass of the windows as he passed them, and then he stepped into his room and shut the door behind him. He could neither smell nor hear anyone else in the room with him, so at least. He wouldn't have put it past the other boys in the dorm to come in and snoop through his things, or trash them, or take them.

Sherlock peeled off his sweat-drenched clothes and dropped them into his laundry hamper, which was nearly overflowing. He put off doing chores as long as he could, even when he felt so bored that he would do anything for a distraction.

He got dressed in a pair of dark trousers and a deep purple button-up shirt, then put on his black school blazer. Whilst waiting for John to be ready to leave, he got his chestnut violin out of its case and drew the bow across the strings, playing the first few moments of his favourite Bach composition.

Maybe he would wake someone up with it, maybe he wouldn't. He didn't care either way.

 


End file.
